Turning Point

I haven't gotten the package yet.. haha oops.  It's ok, I'll start bringing them (mints) to church and giving them to the kids.  Yeah, that was the apartment (in the pictures from last week), it is really nice because they just redid the interior.  But it is small and the building's old...but good location.  My coat will be extremely warm, I'm excited to have to wear it.  So this week I bought a shopka from the army surplus store for 800 rubles, you will see pictures of it sometime in the future.  It will be plenty warm.  It's synthetic fur so it was not expensive and I won't feel bad getting some good wear on it, or if it gets dirty.  I'll probably look for a real fur one next year.  I also bought some leather mittens with fur on the inside for 500 rubles on the rinok. Those are probably the warmest things for hands.  But they are not very convenient for doing things, so I'll probably only wear them on the coldest days.  Haven't got boots yet, but I found a store that has some good durable ones and they are getting some in my size soon. They won't be cheap but they will be very good quality.  I would rather buy boots there than on the rinok.  Side note, Grandpa McCoy would love the rinok.  He would do a good job intimidating the vendors and getting good prices.  Good question about the "too cold temperature".. I suppose I will find out if it happens

So this week was also pretty rough.  We have lost a lot of people who we thought would become good investigators in the last few weeks.  And this week we had to spend a lot of time contacting.  I was pretty down near the middle of last week because we had a few days with 1 or no meetings and we were spending a lot of time just walking around trying to talk to people.  With absolutely no success, many times we couldn't even get people to listen for more than a few seconds time after time. So the more that that kept going the more I would get discouraged and not try as much and at the end of the day I was feeling bad about the effort I had put in.  And I was getting pretty down on myself because I didn't see that I was going to be able to improve. But on Wednesday night I think I had a turning point.  I pulled out some of my old letters that I keep in their own folder and read them and it helped more than I could have ever imagined.  The ones that had the most impact on me were the letters that Bishop Lish and Rob wrote, and the blessing Dad gave me before I left.  Just reading those changed my whole attitude, and it was amazing because I feel like all three of them were written to me at that very time in my mission (which I'm sure will reoccur occasionally)  and they understood exactly what I was thinking at that time.  Anyway what happened is they totally changed my attitude and the next day, we still didn't have much success, but when I came home that night, I was totally satisfied with the work I was able to put in that day and I felt great. And that has continued until now, so I'm very Grateful for what I think will be a really big turning point in my mission.

So some really awesome experiences did happen this week.  Our big glimmer of hope in all of our work is Aleksei.  He still has some concerns but he wants to be baptized and he has a date that we are really excited about! He said he will work toward being baptized on Oct 29, but he won't make any promises that he will be ready by then.  So he's been a great blessing for us and is doing awesome.  He fed us an awesome meal on Saturday.  We helped him till his garden for a couple hours, and he had his wife make us borscht.  It was my first time having it and it was awesome.  She also made a salad and tea and honey bread stuff, and everything except the bread and the honey was straight from their garden.  It was delicious.  (Dad: if you still are planning on coming here in a few years. We will definitely visit him.  That will be way more fun than touring any tourist place, to see some real life of a Russian and he speaks English and is just awesome.)  

We also had a really funny experience.  Our branch president just got married and 4 missionaries and some of his family helped him move all of his wife's stuff to his apartment, including some furniture and a piano!  So here's the funny thing.  Turns out a Russian move is nothing like a McCoy move.  Rob and James would have left after 2 minutes there.  There was no order, no prep and mass chaos.  The women were inside just throwing everything in shopping bags, there were no boxes.  Men were just grabbing bags and furniture (often the furniture still had things on it, like a desk with stuff on it, or bookshelves) and putting it in the truck with no particular order.  There was no caution, things were being banged on walls, the piano was hilarious. all of the men just got on it, and there was no order, just a lot of yelling like "go, go go". But hey, it made it down a flight of stairs and up two haha.  And the whole process actually went really fast, took about 30 minutes to load and about the same to unload.

It's starting to get a little chilly, been wearing a light jacket, so hopefully it won't get too cold too fast.

Thanks for the emails, love you all.

Elder Topham

A Few Highlights

Hey Everyone,

So this week was pretty rough.  It was by far the worst stats-wise that I've had my whole mission.  I don't know, it just stunk.  We only had 4 meetings the whole week.  It was bad, We had one of our investigators lose his phone so we can't get a hold of him.  2 said that they didn't want to meet for a while, and probably the most frustrating of all are the ones who we set up times with and either cancel at the last second or just don't show up.  Even our usually inactive family that we see about once a week didn't have time for us this week.  Anyway, it was just all around bad.  But it's weird.  I would have thought that only having 4 meetings in an entire week would mean endless hours contacting, but it really doesn't.  There was a lot of contacting this week, but things just take so long.  Like traveling to and from appointments, doing service, English club,  planning, stopping by inactive members homes, etc. so we were still busy without doing any 4 hours straight of contacting, so that's good I guess.  But it's really frustrating to have so few meetings.

It's really had to contact, nobody ever wants to listen.  The most effective way is to ask if they speak English and invite them to English club, because a lot of times, they will stop and ask you why you are there, or why you have a free English club and then you can talk about the gospel.  That's the only way that I've gotten really any kind of conversation going.  Maybe other than asking some younger guys about sports or something.  Other than that contacting is really hard.

So here are a few highlights of what has happened recently. 

I bought some hair clippers, so I can do my own haircuts, so I'm really happy about that.

Yesterday at church it was really crazy.  So, just as a background: there are tons of missionaries who attend our branch.  4 elders, 2 sisters, the APs, who are going to be around more now and are actually assigned an area now, and the office couple.   Then there are a few, maybe 8 or so Melchezidek Priesthood holders, and three semi active young men.  So in priesthood yesterday, one of the young men who was totally inactive when I got here, but has been coming since, was being ordained a priest.  I can't take credit for that, the other elders have been working with him, but I enjoy talking to him at church and activities and stuff because he is patient with me.  Anyway, the BP (Branch President) asked him (Grisha) who he wanted to ordain him and he pointed at me and said "Elder Topham."  So obviously I was freakin out, because I wouldn't have even been sure on the wording in English.  So Elder Drasso hands me a little card that says the blessing on it, but it was really hard to read.  Anyway it was bad, I accidentally tried to give him the priesthood again, and I didn't realize it until after I read it, I skipped an important word I think, so I had to do it again.  The blessing was rough language-wise, but I wasn't to worried about that, I got across what I needed to.  Anyway, the good part is that I don't think Grisha really cared that I messed up, and he was happy afterward, so I'll do better next time.

I've been doing some fun service at people's dachas, I've harvested potatoes, spread fertilizer, cut firewood, and all kinds of fun stuff.

I found a good place to buy boots, it's a store so they are a little more expensive, but they should be good quality, much better than the rinok and they said they will have my size soon.

I saw Elder Johnson when the new missionaries came through on transfers so that was fun.  He headed out to Krasnoyarsk the next day.

Another interesting experience.  Aleksei, tried to introduce us to our neighbor, because he had expressed some kind of interest in meeting us.  Anyway, we show up and he is drunk.  In America I would say he was really drunk but I have a new perspective now.  He kept trying to give us vodka which was really nice of him, but he would not take no for an answer and he was even getting mad about it. It's good Aleksei was there to help us out, because you could tell he was scared of Aleksei.  We ended up just leaving because there was really nothing at all we could do.  We'll try calling him on a weekday.

Congrats Dani on being picked as a rep.  I hope you have fun doing it.  I'm so happy to hear that you've been playing well in volleyball.  5 Aces in a row! That's awesome.  It's also good they aren't playing the second string as much any more.

Hope you had fun hiking the Y,  Matthew.  And that's awesome that you are in a higher golf group now, what kind of things are different in that group?

Sorry to hear about the (BYU) game.  Sounds pretty bad, but good job getting on ESPN, Sam and Carson. 

And to mom, Just for future reference I don't need any more mints, I have plenty for a long long time, so even though they are convenient for package stuffers, candy especially chocolate is more valuable I would say.

Love you mom.

- Elder Topham

With our investigator, Aleksei at his house.  This is after we had shoveled and spread fertilizer with him for about an hour.  His house is the nicest one Elder Drasso has seen in all of Russia and he built it himself.  His garden in amazing and beautiful.  You can see some of it in the picture.

The inside of my new winter coat.

Me in my winter coat.

Elder Drasso wearing my coat and his shopka.

A Few Pictures

MTC

Elder Topham and Elder Collinsworth

Elder Steffen, Elder Topham, and Elder McClellan

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Lenin Square

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First Apartment in Novosibirsk

Staying in Novosibirsk

So both last week and this week the library has been closed, and I think it will be every Monday, so we found this Internet club but its more expensive, so that stinks and I haven't figured out how to send pictures yet. Sorry, I'll work on it some more if I have more time. 

So the most exciting news is probably that I did buy a coat this week so that's awesome.  I really wanted to send some pictures of it but I don't know if I'll be able to. Aleksei took us down to his guy, and negotiated for me.  The coat is awesome.  It is a Siberian military coat.  It's all black, it's got an inch thick of gray fur lining the entire inside.  I'm not sure what the outside is made of, it's not leather but it's more rough than most synthetic materials.  Elder Drasso said that it is probably the warmest looking coat that he has ever seen.  The only problem that we can see with it is that it is so big and heavy it will be a pain to store and carry around for transfers and stuff.  I got a really good price for it.  Only 4000 rubles which is really cheap for anything with that much fur.  So I'm really excited about it.  If I can find boots my size then I'll be all set.  I think I'm going to buy a cheap hat this winter and all next year be on the look out for a really nice mink or fox hat that I will be able to take home.

That's too bad that Cyd and Reese moved, but it sounds like it will be better for them.

So at English club we are actually not supposed to "teach." It's supposed to be a conversational practice group.   There are 3 groups based on skill level.  It's hard to converse much with 1st group but second and third are very good and you really don't prepare anything. You just go and talk with them about some subject and tell them some words they can use.  We are always looking for creative things to do to practice that don't require teaching.  Last week I had second group and we played 20 questions in English and that went over well.

I haven't played basketball for a while.  At sports night we go down to a field and usually play soccer or frisbee or football.  Usually 2 of the 3 each time.  All Russians like to play soccer and the other two sports usually fascinate them because usually they have never thrown a football or a frisbee. So obviously they are terrible but it's fun.  We are having a picnic for p-day today.  Last week we went to Carl's JR. It was awesome! But it is really expensive here.  There is really only that and 2 KFCs. That's pretty much all the fast food in Novo.  The Carl's is at their mall.  One KFC is right by our apartment, but it's expensive and we have to be really tight with money.  So maybe we'll go sometime soon.

So the changes everyone has been talking about are that  previously every city was a zone, and there really weren't district leaders, only a couple in the big cities. Now it is condensed into 4 zones.  The city of Novo is split and put with 2 smaller cities on each side.  So it's going to be different.  Also, they are reopening a city. Elder Eborn and Elder Carr, Erik Leavell's friend from Malibu, are going down there. 

Oh and before I go, I didn't get transferred. I'm staying here with Elder Drasso for at least one more transfer.  This picture is of everyone who served in Novosibirsk this last transfer.  It's a lot of people because it includes the APs, office elders, outgoing office couple and incoming office couple.

-Elder Topham

* Please note that Elder Topham's email address is .net NOT .com

Not Afraid

Hey guys,

Thanks for the mail and emails this week.  I got letters from the ward so thank you to everyone in the ward who wrote me, especially those of you I don't really know.  I got one from the Hulmes, and I got your package this week on Wednesday.  It was great! Thanks for the note card and the box Matthew, I really look forward to it and thank you too Danica -  I also got a dear elder from you this week so thanks for writing to me.  Good luck on the election this week, Make sure to just keep working hard to talk to as many people as you can and get them to vote.  So the package got here in really good condition and unopened so that's cool.  Elder Drasso got a package on the same day, it was in a flat rate envelope, so it looks like you might be able to stuff a little more into one of those things than in one of the flat rate boxes, but his was opened.  Someone knifed it open and put some tape on it, but as far as we know nothing was missing from it.  Maybe the envelopes have a little more of a chance of being opened than the boxes, who knows.

I forgot in last week's email to write about the training that Pres. Gibbons held for all of the trainers and new missionaries.  It was awesome! It was from his living room, and he had all five other cities on video chat through skype.  The whole set-up of it all was really awesome, and his teaching was awesome too.

So Dad, I'll be taking a bunch of money off my card today to buy some winter clothes so just expect that.  Also for future reference, in the rinok it won't matter but, is it better to use cash or my debit card to buy things from stores?  I've heard that the bank charges fees every time you use your card from here so it's just better to take off cash at large chunks at a time, so let me know what our bank's policy is.  I'll be going to the rinok today to try to start buying some stuff.  On Saturday Aleksei took me to the small rinok by his house to meet his jacket dealer.  He seems pretty shady, haha, but I'll be able to get something really good from him for a good price.  Aleksei did all the talking for me, it was awesome.  He said he was negotiating but he was pretty much just yelling at the guy in angry Russian, then he would turn to me and in really polite English with a British accent say something like, "It's all well, he will bring the right jacket in your size next Saturday."  So I have to go back with him, but I'm really excited.  It was really cool. Aleksei brought his huge dog, with us and he was walking us through this really shady, dirty market, and a bunch of the people there knew him, and a lot were probably scared of him.  I just really felt like I was in Harry Potter and Hagrid was taking us through one of those crazy dark magic places with Fang, so it was pretty awesome.

We moved in to our new apartment this week.  It's really nice because they just remodeled the inside so the floors and walls and stuff are really nice, but its a lot smaller than the old one.  The kitchen is the biggest pain.  There's a sink, a stove, and a fridge, then you turn around and there's a little tiny table there and that's it.  There is no counter space so it's really hard to do anything in there or to even fit two people in there.

I hope seminary is going well, Mom. You asked me who my favorite prophet or story was and I said it was Daniel. He is awesome.  First, I really like how in Daniel chapter 1 he refuses the king's meat, mostly because he has the confidence to stand up for what he knows is right.  I can apply that to the word of wisdom today.  But it was probably much harder for Daniel because he was sitting in the king's court or whatever and it would have been really easy to feel embarrassed to not eat and do what everyone else was doing.  As a result of his courage and confidence other people, rather than saying oh he's weird for not doing what they do, they said wow, that's cool that he stands up for what he believes in and respects him more for that, eventually at least.  And I've found the same to be true, especially for teenagers.  With all standards.  Then in chapter six, everyone knows the story, but I love in verse 10 not only does Daniel decide to pray still, but it says that he prays with the windows open.  He's not afraid to demonstrate his beliefs and show others what he believes in even if it means his death, and that's awesome.  He ends up making a large impact on the lives of others by doing that.  He's awesome!

We have a new investigator named Giorgi.  He is Asian and he is from a small village near Vladivostok and he believes in like nature gods and shamans and chants and raindances and stuff.  It sounds a lot like Indians in America.  So it was pretty crazy teaching him a lesson, and it will be crazy in the time to come I'm sure.  

I'll try to send some pictures next week.

-Elder Topham